Special Article

Bullycide in America – Children with Disabilities

By Joyce Bender [view bio]
President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services.

Choosing suicide over dealing with bullies in school is a terrible choice many young people are making today; a great percentage of the victims are children with disabilities.

In Bullycide, Death at Playtime: An Expose of Child Suicide Caused by Bullying, Neil Marr and Tim Field created the word Bullycide to describe children who commit suicide to avoid one more day of bullying. It is absolutely horrifying. In 1967, an 11 year old child was the first documented case of committing Bullycide in the UK.

In the year 2000, I began volunteering my services to several school districts in Delaware to teach high school students with disabilities about the world of work. I have dedicated my life to the employment of people with significant disabilities and this includes preparing our youth with disabilities for work.

A great company and partner of Bender Consulting Services, Inc. is Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). They had been approached by several school districts in Delaware to create a program for high school students with disabilities about the world of work. I volunteered to create the program and conduct it at CSC.

I asked the schools to send 20 students to CSC on Disability Mentoring Day; those students then would participate in a four segment program over the next six months. The students would meet me at CSC and I would conduct a leadership program focused on employment, from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. I never realized I would become so involved and attached to these wonderful students.

The Bender Leadership Academy is today taught in Delaware and Pennsylvania and will be world wide with the new Paychecks Not Pity TM web training program. I am committed to these young people and the obstacles they must overcome.

Over the years, more and more of the students told me horror stories about being the victims of bullying in school. I was absolutely infuriated. It was then I heard how several of them had tried to commit suicide as a result of bullying. One young man with autism told me how in elementary school he had been bullied so often, he tried to run in front of a UPS truck; the truck stopped in time. Students with disabilities told me how bullies at school hit them, stole their lunch money, or taunted them endlessly.

In Barbara Coloroso's book, The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, I was shocked as I read the author's introduction describing children from the age of 8 to 18 who committed Bullycide to avoid the bullies and left notes telling their families the names of the bullies.

According to a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2001 study, children with disabilities, 3 out of 10 times, are affected as a victim, a bully or both. In the UK Mencap, the Mental Health Charity, said that bullying children with disabilities is not being taken seriously enough. One story was of a young child with an intellectual disability, who would return home with bruises and torn clothes because the bullies found it entertaining to attack him.

The book Bullycide in America is the story of mothers speaking out about their children who committed Bullycide. One of those children, Jared High, has a champion mother, Brenda High, who has made her life a crusade to educate America about Bullycide and trying to save lives.

Brenda's son, Jared who had ear infections that caused speech problems and then later caused learning delays, was a beautiful and gifted child in many ways. On May 6, 1998, Jared was brutally attacked at the Pasco School District and was almost killed in the assault. In September of 1998, Jared shot himself. (To read more about Jared go to www.JaredStory.com)

What is happening here folks!!! We are allowing our children to go to school, which is supposed to be a safe place but it is not a safe place. We are seeing children with disabilities frequently attacked by bullies. Now you know, that action could lead to Bullycide.

The overwhelming theme in several of the books written about Bullycide and in the research conducted is that our children do not tell us they are being bullied and are not telling the teachers at school.

Cyberspace bullying is a new form of bullying for children today. Children can be very nasty in person, but can be even more damaging over the Internet. We have all read the horrible story about the suicide of Megan Meier caused by cyberspace bullying. Megan was tricked by an adult who posed as a “hot” young boy, Josh Evans. Josh did not exist. Josh was an adult woman working with another Mom to trick Megan to get revenge for allegedly gossiping about the daughter of one of the mothers. “Josh” dumped Megan and it was followed by horrible name calling on the MySpace site. Megan then hung herself. She was a victim of Bullycide. Did you know she had ADHD and bouts of depression?

In April 2008, I spoke at the Epilepsy Foundations' Kids Speak Up Dinner in DC to many children with epilepsy and their parents. I asked the children, whom I had never met, to raise their hands if they were being bullied at school and felt comfortable talking about it. I did not imagine that instantly about 30 hands would go up.

The first young child, age 12 from Alabama, told us about how she is called, “Seizure Dog, Seizure Freak”, and other unmentionable names. The next child, James age 10, stood up and said, ”The students don't care; the teachers don't care . . .” and he fell in his seat sobbing and could not continue on. This went on for the next 30 minutes; young children with epilepsy telling how they are harassed by bullies at school.

We wonder why young people with disabilities have low self-esteem? Try being called names or assaulted throughout school and see how you would develop. We must stop this or we will see more of our young people with disabilities commit Bullycide.

The number three cause of death for our young adults is suicide and the number one trigger for suicide is depression. We must stop these assaults.

I would propose making anti-bullying a major education item in every school and college with on-going programs to educate teachers, parents, and students. You must make it clear that the school will have zero tolerance for bullying.

Listen and pay attention to students with disabilities. Ask them if they are bullied and make them feel comfortable talking to you.

Does your state have an anti-bullying policy; if not be a leader and work to get one?

As Brenda High reminds us all in her book, Bullycide in America, The No Child Left Behind Act requires the schools to keep documentation of being a safe haven for students. Remember, federal and state funds are given out based on those records. Every parent must speak up and go to the school if there are any issues and then document them.

We must take action to protect our youth – they are our future.

Joyce Bender is President and CEO of Bender Consulting Services. Please direct questions for Joyce to info@disability-marketing.com.